The Bais Yaakov Cookbook

Choice recipe from the brand new cookbook.

For garlic lovers everywhere! Prepare an extra head of roasted garlic. Its soft caramelized cloves are simply irresistible spread on bread as an accompaniment to this soup. Better yet, pop whole roasted cloves straight into the bowls before filling with soup

1 head of garlic

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling

5 leeks, sliced in half lengthwise,

cleaned from any dirt, and sliced thinly

4-5 large white onions, diced large

6 zucchini, peeled and diced large

2 quarts (8 cups) water

1/4 cup chicken soup mix

1/4 cup vegetable soup mix

1-2 tablespoons kosher salt (optional in place of soup mix)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Slice off the top of the head of garlic, just enough that the actual cloves are peeking out. Place the bulb on a piece of aluminum foil. Drizzle olive oil over the garlic and seal the foil. Place sealed garlic in baking pan, to avoid leaking, and roast for 1 hour.

While garlic is roasting, place 2 tablespoons olive oil in a 6-quart pot over medium heat. Add leeks and onions; saute until golden brown. Browning longer will create a deeper flavor. Add zucchini to the pot. Add water, chicken soup mix and vegetable soup mix, or salt. Bring to a boil and cover.

Reduce heat, and simmer on low for 45 minutes. Remove the garlic from the oven and allow to cool. Pop out cloves directly into soup. Transfer soup to a blender and puree until smooth or use an immersion blender directly into the pot. Serve hot.

If there are leftovers, when reheating the soup, heat on low flame, just until warm.

6 servings

Green Bean Mango Salad

This unusual salad is a favorite. Your friends and family will be clamoring to add this recipe to their collections.

2 pounds green beans, washed and trimmed

Dressing:

1 cup Italian dressing

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard

Salad:

1 avocado, diced

4 scallions, chopped

1 mango, peeled and diced

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

½ cup chopped pecans

3 cloves garlic, minced

To assemble salad:

Place green beans into a 4-quart pot. Add water to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook 6 minutes or until green beans are bright green. Immediately, remove from heat and drain to stop cooking process.

Whisk Italian dressing, honey and Dijon-style mustard in a small bowl. Place green beans, avocado, scallions and mango into a large salad bowl. Top with sunflower seeds, pecans and minced garlic. Pour dressing over vegetables. Toss to coat.

6 -8 Servings

Beer Stew

Light beer is beer that is reduced in alcohol content or in calories, in comparison to regular beer. The spelling “lite beer” is also commonly used.

1 pound beef cubes

1/4 cup flour

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large onion, sliced

2 garlic cloves, minced

2-4 tablespoons wine vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh parsley leaves, chopped

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

1 cup beef broth (1 teaspoon beef soup mix

combined with 1 cup water)

3/4 cup light beer

Prepared rice (optional)

Preheat oven to 325°F. Place flour in a small bowl. Set aside. Heat vegetable oil in a large, preferably ovenproof, skillet over medium flame. While heating, dredge meat in flour. Add onion and garlic to skillet. Then add meat to skillet. Increase heat to medium high and brown meat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add wine vinegar, parsley, brown sugar, bay leaf, thyme and basil. Mix well to combine. Pour in broth, followed by beer. Mix well. Transfer stew to a 13x9x2-inch baking dish, or just leave it in the skillet and place in oven.

Bake covered 2½ hours. Serve over bed of rice.

4 servings

Boston Cream Pie

Vanilla Cake:

3 large eggs, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup sugar, divided

Pinch salt

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Custard Filling:

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups milk or non-dairy coffee creamer

6 large egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Pinch salt

Chocolate Glaze:

1/2 cup sugar

3 tablespoons corn syrup

2 tablespoons water

4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch round cake dish and place a parchment paper round on the bottom. In an electric mixer, beat egg yolks and vanilla on medium speed until well blended. Add cup sugar; beat until well blended, light yellow and thick. Transfer to a bowl. Set aside.

Mix sugar and all-purpose flour in a small saucepan. Whisk in milk or creamer. Add egg yolks, vanilla and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking continuously until thick. Remove from heat. Transfer to a medium bowl, press plastic wrap onto the surface of the custard and refrigerate 30 minutes.

To assemble pie:

Using a serrated knife, cut cake in half, horizontally. Spread one half of the cake evenly with filling; it will drip down sides of cake. Top with remaining cake half. Refrigerate while preparing glaze.

In a saucepan, bring sugar, corn syrup and water to a boil over low heat. Cook until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat. Add chocolate pieces; let stand 1 minute. Whisk until smooth. Gradually pour glaze over cake. Allow glaze to drip down sides of cake. Refrigerate to set.

8 servings

Excerpted from The Bais Yaakov Cookbook. Much more than a cookbook, this is a comprehensive guide to everything connected to food and the kitchen. It is packed with attractive color photographs offering 200 original recipes and a ton of useful information for the cook ranging from shopping to setting an attractive table.

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Visitor Comments: 2

(2)
Rachel from CA,
February 17, 2012 2:27 AM

delicious

I tried out this soup but accidentally put yellow onions instead of white ones. Came out delicious anyway! It's worth trying!!! My kids are toddlers and they asked me for a second serving!!
Thank you!

(1)
Sarah,
February 13, 2012 12:29 PM

Measurement typo with Boston Cream Pie Recipe?

Hi,
Not sure if I followed the recipe correctly. In the cake portion of the Boston Cream Pie recipe, it calls for two cups of sugar while the ingredients only call for 1/2 cup, divided for the cake portion. Please clarify.
Thanks! Looks delicious! : )

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I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!